San Francisco: Part 5 – The Robots Cars

I didn’t plan on falling for the robot cars. But San Francisco had other ideas.

The first one we saw was easy to dismiss — just a sleek black car gliding down the street with no one behind the wheel. Oh, that’s one of those Waymo things. And then we saw another one. And then another. And then a couple rolling past together, almost like they were carpooling. By the time we spotted a small fleet of them cruising through the city, it stopped being background scenery and started feeling like something worth paying attention to. San Francisco was clearly living a few years ahead of the rest of us.

The first night of the Dream State concert, we decided to try one. Why not? We were already in a city running on the future, so might as well ride it.

Requesting a Waymo is disarmingly easy. You use the app, set your destination, and wait. Within minutes, a car pulls up. No driver. Just a door handle, an open seat, and a calming voice greeting you by name. We climbed in, buckled up, and I’ll be honest, there was a split second of wait, are we really doing this? before the car just… moved. Smoothly, confidently, completely unbothered by the fact that there was no human in charge.

The ride to the concert venue was surreal in the best way. We kept glancing at the empty driver’s seat. The car navigated turns, yielded, merged, all with the kind of calm precision that most humans don’t even have on a good day. We arrived without incident, filed out onto the sidewalk, and looked at each other like did that just happen?

It happened again on the ride home after the concert, giddy and a little overwhelmed from the music. Perfect.

The next morning, we made a decision: leave the rental car in the hotel garage. For the rest of the day, we were going full Waymo.

This is where it got interesting.

We wanted to go to Boudin, the famous sourdough bakery and restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. We entered the destination, a Waymo showed up, and off we went. Except when it dropped us off… we weren’t at the Wharf. We were at a Boudin location just a few blocks from our hotel. My friend looked around, looked at me, and shook her head. This is not the right one. She was sure the one we wanted was on the Wharf, and she was right.

So we did what you do. We requested another Waymo, laughed about it, and headed in the right direction this time. The Waymo didn’t apologize for the misunderstanding. The Waymo simply arrived.

We spent the day at Fisherman’s Wharf — sourdough, sea air, all of it — and when we were ready to head back, we called for another ride. The car came. We got in. It took us home.

That night, we took a Waymo to Dream State again, and then back to the hotel after. Four rides in one day. By the end of it, flagging down a Waymo felt as natural as hailing a cab, except quieter, smoother, and honestly just a little bit magical every single time.

I took a lot of photos. Like, a lot of photos. Every angle, every light, every time I spotted one idling at a red light or rounding a corner. There’s something about them that just demands documentation: the empty seat, the calm authority of the car moving through the city on its own terms. I’ve included some of my favorites throughout this post, and I put the rest together in a little scrapbook page at the bottom because I couldn’t bear to leave them out.

San Francisco was already a city full of moments worth remembering. But the Waymos? They were the part of the trip that genuinely made me feel like I’d stepped into the future, not a scary, dystopian one, but a clean, quiet, weirdly charming one where the car just shows up and takes you where you need to go.

Most of the time, anyway.

That wraps up the San Francisco Series! Coming up next: what we ate (because the food deserves its own post), and the DJs from Dream State who are still living rent-free in my head.